1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasound device that produces a three-dimensional image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ultrasound imaging devices operate by generating ultrasound signals and bouncing the ultrasound signals off an object to generate an image. The object may be a fetus or an internal organ such as a heart or kidney. FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a general system 100 for generating an ultrasound image. A patient 10 needing, for example, ultrasound image of their heart has a probe 20 placed against or near their chest. The probe 20 produces ultrasound signals and generates a volume of data from the received ultrasound signals. This data is sent to imager 50 that then produces an ultrasound image on display 90. The image may be saved for later review and/or may be transmitted to an external storage device.
A disadvantage of a conventional ultrasound system is that it is difficult to generate a three-dimensional image of sufficient size to either view the entire heart at once, or to have a frame rate high enough that the image does not appear jerky.
Several solutions have been proposed, such as increasing the processing power of the ultrasound device, reducing the overall area of the scanning such that the processing complexity drops and the scanning rate can be increased, image smoothing from frame to frame, and displaying only two-dimensional images.
However, all of these solutions suffer either extremely large size to produce the processing power or reduced diagnostic efficiency because of the small areas that are actually imaged.